Performance as an Escape Route: Women’s Strategies of Participation in Andean Fiestas

This presentation examines how a new generation of mestiza and Indigenous female traditional performers and theater artists in the southern Peruvian Andes carve out space within collective, popular, and religious celebrations known as fiestas patronales. Through a range of performative strategies, these women claim respect, visibility, equity, agency, and belonging within cultural spaces historically shaped by patriarchal norms. This presentation also explores the intersections of theatricality and decolonial feminism in popular Andean performance.